Everyone is OBESSED with getting more, when we overproduce so much already. We don’t need more, everyone sites Marx and Lenin without ever talking about their contexts. Marx died in 18th century England and Lenin died in early 20th century Soviet Union, Lenin literally talked about problems of Taylorism in Enslavement of Man to Machine yet he chose it as a strategy and he chose to have stricter punishments for slight mistakes in factories not because Lenin was someone who believed in sacrificing those who live now to build a better future but because he saw that their hope for revolutions in Europe didn’t come true and now needed to rapidly industrialize, in the end Taylorism wasn’t the thing that led to it but Stalin’s methods. Today we don’t need that, we have already exhausted from 1970s, now how much more we, as humans, will extract from it?
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everyone sites Marx and Lenin without ever talking about their contexts
What context do you want added? Are you saying that Marx and Lenin didn’t anticipate overproduction and overextraction of nature? The ecological impact of capitalism was already clear in Marx’s time and earlier. For example, the horrific smog in London caused discontent among the working class. John Bellamy Foster makes a strong case in his book, Marx’s Ecology, that ecology is not only present in Marx, but of equal categorical weight to labor, because labor is the metabolism between man and nature.
Yet, despite abstractly affirming nature, communism today still has to face concrete reality of the conditions of present day society. It is imperative to build up the productive forces of socialist societies, not because nature has been forgotten, but because it is necessary in order to overcome capitalism; and overcoming capitalism is a prerequisite of constructing a genuine, radically ecological society. There can be no successful socialist state which lacks the productive forces to resist capitalism, to produce cutting-edge missiles, abundant food and other supplies, and so on. On this note, trade is essential to the modern economy, so socialist states must also build up their integration with other states, in order to participate in the global division of labor, buy the best computer chips, etc.
On Marx and Lenin, I meant that in their time capitalism was mostly of an industrial nature where Lenin even believed that capitalism can’t increase agricultural output which we now know to be false, Marx and Lenin both saw a world which didn’t have an agriculture as robust as ours so they saw increasing production at anytime as a good thing because it was really stagnant even under industrial revolution. In our time agriculture has been fostered to a point where we now have to worry about soil exhaustion which wasn’t the case even during late Soviet Union. On topic of nature and communism, I recently read a book called Communism: The Highest Stage of Ecology, so I have been thinking about how Ecology doesn’t really have an ideological element in nearly any major movement advocating for communism, in major parts it is because many movements are in places which can’t afford to, which need to develop their infrastructure but even those who can focus on Ecology, ignore it for a fetishization of aimless growth at faster and faster rate.
It’s very hard to integrate “avoid ecological collapse through actual acknowledgement and engagement with the wider earth system” and “have the productive forces to not get killed by Capital”. Capital doesn’t care about killing its host afterall, and that’s a tremendous combat advantage.
So I think they just don’t wanna think about it. I’ve seen some books like Climate Leviathan, but have yet to get into them.
where Lenin even believed that capitalism can’t increase agricultural output
Hadn’t it already done so long before his time or am I misunderstanding?
Agriculture production was quite stagnant for a while until the development of artificial fertilizer and its mass adoption. Factory farming is also a practice which was only developed later, Marx and Lenin both saw a stage capitalism which rapidly increased industrial productive capacity but hadn’t changed much in agriculture.
but even those who can focus on Ecology, ignore it for a fetishization of aimless growth at faster and faster rate.
can you give an example of this?
Most of the main groups and figures in America for example, organisations like PSL, RCP USA, media figures which are socdems for everyone but by American standards they are sadly communists, they all support policies like preventing polluting data centers from popping up at home but their delegates abroad just talk about how they need Chinese level production at home like my guy China produces so much because it needs to keep up with America because otherwise it’ll be swallowed up by America. Chinese military budget is what it is because America will overthrow the CPC the moment it gets a single weak chance at this point, China produces so much because the whole imperial core turned it into their factory, America doesn’t need what China has because everything is to make sure America and its cronies can’t undermine the project. America as a country is already bloated enough, it doesn’t need anymore generally speaking, certain sectors like schools need funding which are deliberately withheld, there’s no scarcity of it.
okay maybe its the US context that i’m missing then. the parties and media here often have an eco-socialist perspective. Melanchon (LFI, french broad left party) being the most famous example. He has been criticising the Macron gov for not adressing the wildfires and has been promoting turning administrative divisions into bioregions etc etc. Jason Hickle is also extremely popular. You see a lot of red-green party coalitions (although they are usually not very radical). so from my EU point of view communists/marxists have been very keen on adressing ecology.
EDIT: for PSL, they do talk a lot about the climate crisis and how socialism is the only way to adress it, so im not sure where you are getting that they want infinite growth?
Yea French left is more eco-socialist, one of the only points I’ll ever give to the damned French, don’t mind it, French are just the worst. On PSL, I meant their home platform has many environmentalist policies but everything about America and American organizations just seems so insincere when none of the platforms follow any principled practice and everything is just extremely geared towards productivity, consumerism, production, and emitting as much green house gases as possible. Like America is one of the places that will genuinely lose by having socialism because it has too much from the world and no one country can have all that.
I dunno man but I’m tired boss
Me too :( I just want some books and food, beans and rice with some spices and you’re seriously good for life.
in the end Taylorism wasn’t the thing that led to it but Stalin’s methods.
You mean the methods that beat the Nazis and resulted in the second-highest life expectancy increase in recorded history?
I think OP is arguing against Lenin’s NEP (with Taylorism) and for Stalins centralised planning
Ohhh, okay.
Yea those ones exactly, they were quite brutal but required for a threat like Nazi Germany. That era’s housing project still house poor people of former Soviet republics today.
I think humans have always been like this. Thousands of years ago the upper class Romans, etc were famous for their excess. It’s just this is the first time in history that the masses can also overconsume, combined with the fact that we now have non perishable items like plastic polluting the planet, that makes it all so much worse.
True though I would argue it is only certain parts of the world, Rome can be said to be the blueprint of modern consumption standards with it being a blueprint for all empires.
You got to be careful not to reduce the world down to biological essentialism. It’s fair to put forward an argument that we’ve potentially reached abundance, but that doesn’t mean we distribute things equally. Life is complicated, everyone who claims to have figured it out is lying. All we can do is observe tendencies and write possible outcomes, based on assumed observations. Where do correct ideas come from? Well you need to test it directly, to be sure.
Socialism/Communism is just the logical conclusion when one observes, as much history as possible and tries to make sense of the underlying contradictions. When you try to make changes and lots of people dislike your proposals, when they have no faith in your direction - there’s a good chance they will eliminate you, they will betray you, they fill flock to somebody else.
You are correct in the sense that we cannot simply copy the past, because history doesn’t repeat. I would be lying if I said I find the current way people around myself behave acceptable, but I think I somewhat understand what may have lead them here. It’s likely my own analysis lacks the depth it really requires, because a lot of information I need is redacted. Thus I am incapable of producing a more thorough analysis and perhaps I would see what I really need to do. On the other hand we have people who don’t know what hunger feels like, they don’t really care about others that much or think it’s a fool’s game to try to change the “impossible” or “human natur!”
Like, we cannot possibly analyze the internal workings of every single human being, even if we had a supercomputer now and conducted a survey how do you know someone isn’t just doing some trolling?
Etc.There’s a lot of things i dislike about this world. I don’t like having to lie just to get people to trust me, don’t like that I have to cooperate with vile people, don’t like my loved ones being captured in cults I can’t save them from. I can’t stand the fact that I can’t talk about things without people assuming malice, in forms of me trying to farm for sympathy or stolen valor and the way the internet is run now basically forces me to stay anonymous, which is necessary for my own safety, but ultimately cannot be denied offers tremendous benefits to people willing to take advantage of it.
It’s easy to be idealistic when one’s own skin isn’t in the game.
That’s the thing, we already have enough but we don’t distribute it equally. There are enough resources to make infrastructure for all of the overexploited countries, but they are tied up in monetary systems and people who should know better instead trying to better distribute what exists instead want to create those monetary systems everywhere so overproduction occurs everywhere. Genuinely educated people, not folks in my circles or in my neighborhood, policy level people who aren’t in pockets of liberal capitalist countries but are under more socialist governance don’t seem to understand the fact that there’s so much waste and overproduction in the world constantly, we are in a world where we truly need to ask can we create more while keeping the planet habitable.
